Synopsis

Kiri Haimura has an obsession with beautiful hair—specifically, cutting it. This bizarre trait is what leads him to seek out a rumored long-haired ghost who lives in an abandoned house on a hill. However, he finds not a ghost, but a beautiful girl with long flowing hair named Iwai Mushanokouji, the "Hair Queen," whose hair cannot be cut due to a family curse.

Iwai explains that there is a death game surrounding her, and that if she is killed by a cursed object, aptly named a "Killing Good," the wielder gets their wish granted. After protecting Iwai from "Authors"—Killing Goods users—he learns there is in fact a Killing Good passed down in his own family: a pair of scissors used by his ancestor to commit murders. Naming the scissors "The Severing Crime Edge," he finds that he is able to cut Iwai's cursed hair with them, setting her free to live a normal life. However, many Authors seek to kill the Hair Queen, and Kiri will have to protect her in this lethal game of fate.

If you thought long hair was something of an eye catcher, get a load of this. Dansai Bunri no Crime Edge features a mysterious girl who has probably the longest hair length of almost any anime I've seen. I don't know if that's any sort of accomplishment, but this series takes strange to a new level as there's a particular young boy who is obsessed with the idea of cutting hair. Now the formula is complete with a young boy who wants to cut hair and a girl who has long hair. Oh but that's just the tip of the iceberg. Beyond that mountain of
hair also lies danger for our two adorable friends. That doesn't stop the hair-crossed duo though because in Dansai Bunri no Crime Edge, there's more than just meets the eye beyond that hair.

Dansai Bunri no Crime Edge (also known as The Severing Crime Edge) is an animated series adapted from the manga of the same name written by Tatsuhiko Hikagi. The series starts out in a mysterious way but later turns into a dangerous game scenario. The 'game' involves whoever can kill the “Hair Queen” and the victor would get a glorious prize for his or her efforts. Sounds catchy right? Well, that would be the case but this series here takes that theme and twist it in a way that can swift from adorable to murderous in just a matter of moments. Talk about change...

For starters, the series introduces more of a fantasy theme. The mystical encounter between our main protagonists of the story, Kiri Haimura and Iwai Mushanokoji, is quite unusual. It's not every day that we see people get connected by hair. In fact, what's even more strange is the length of Iwai's hair that seemingly is longer than herself. On the other hand, Kiri who seems like a normal boy quickly becomes entranced by that hair. This strange obsession with hair can be traced to borderline fetish as he seemingly can't take his eyes off of it. It's the beginning of this relationship connected by hair that sets them as the dynamic duo of this murderous game.

For the game itself, it seems to follow a winner takes all scenario meaning that it's every man for themselves. That means one thing: you can't really trust anyone because of the fear of betrayal. And of course, anime series involving a game scenario similar to this is nothing new. Series such as Mirai Nikki, Btooom!, Fate/Stay Night, Rozen Maiden, etc all follow this sort of format where the ultimate winner of the game is decided based on completing specific requirements. For our adorable Iwai though, the requirement is to kill her. That might sound gruesome but it gets worse because the majority of the contestants are nothing like Kiri. In fact, they can be literally tagged as serial killers. It also doesn't help the fact that Kiri himself has an origin related to them. The good news is that he seems to be on Iwai's side more than just that borderline fetish for hair. The bad news? Everyone else seemingly wants our adorable Hair Queen's head on a plate.

Although I find the adorable duo to be somewhat compatible, their relationship seems way more like fantasy than anything else. After all, they are connected by a strange encounter in the first place in that western-like mansion. Furthermore though, the two quickly becomes close despite the fact that Iwai is a potential candidate to win the game. He even proves it too as in the beginning, Kiri is able to take on six-foot tall man with just his scissors. He seemingly plays the role of the 'knight in shining armor' for our adorable Hair Queen. On the other hand, there's Iwai who seems to be the mascot of this show. She is so adorable that everyone seems to frown over her cuteness such as her classmates. She has the traits too with those long hair, those moe like eyes, the little fang-shaped teeth, and heart melting smile. However, she lacks the skill or power to protect herself during many situations. Oh and regarding that hair, it's of course not normal. It has 'magic' written all over it and we can see exactly why Kiri-kun seems to be so fascinated by it.

The people who are hunting down Iwai are known as 'Authors' which is a strange name at that. Going by the game scenario though, it's quite obvious that the Authors wants Iwai dead. The Authors themselves as mentioned earlier before are comparable to professional killers, skilled individuals who kills for his or her own reasons with efficient skill. These individuals themselves are also armed with dangerous weapons known as the 'killing goods'. Going by the trademarks, these tools are instruments of killing. In fact, many of the objects in this series are designed in a way to harm people. For example, there's Kiri and his scissors that also designates the title of the series: the Dansai Bunri no Crime Edge. Then there are the other killing goods that comes in all shapes and sizes such as an injection needle, ropes, and sharp knives. It's not doubt that these weapons are designed to kill. Yikes, talk about Iwai in a situation of life and death here. But thankfully she has her knight in shining armor right?

Well that might somewhat be true but it's clearly seen throughout the series that the duo struggles in their survival against the Authors. Is it because they are weak or because the Authors are too damn strong? I can barely tell since we don't see much back story of either character besides the basic origins. That's one of the weaknesses of this show as the connection built by Kiri and Iwai seems too unbelievable. They are connected based on a fascination of 'hair' in a fantasy like romance. Speaking of which, the romance between the duo seems to be rather strange. It's obvious Iwai is attracted to Kiri as well as vice versa. However, neither of them initiates the first move directly but rather expressed through teases; again involving....the magic word 'hair'. There's also hinted romance by another character towards Kiri throughout the series but the kid's too dense to realize it. Maybe, he's just too into the hair? I wonder.

The way the series is structured also seems to follow the typical 'monster of the week' format. This is expressed by the way in which some Authors make their debut but then some of them disappears to be never seen or heard of again. Then, there's the case of Kiri-kun who uses his killing good to protect Iwai. Being her knight in shining armor, Kiri plays the role of the hero kid who tries to do everything by himself. Most of the time he seems to succeed but other times seems to be on the falling edge. While I do like the fact that he isn't a coward, the way Kiri succeeds sometimes is also a bit unbelievable. Of course, he doesn't always succeed through Gary Stu-like scenarios but his abilities are quite a sight for the other Authors. He's proved himself many times already. On the other hand, the Authors who threatens their lives are constant on odds as they struggle to achieve the task of killing the Hair Queen. Their appearances may be diverse but their insights are not as most of their personalities are dull and lacking flavor from my perspective.

There's also fan service in this series of course. For whatever reason, the teases in this series expands to not just hair but also in the form of an injection as well. The way in which two particular character behaves in such scenes involving the injection shows a rather lewd way of 'bonding'. Then of course, there's Iwai who sometimes isn't full dressed and blushes out of nowhere for some eye candy scenes.

The artwork of this series seems magical. At some stances, it falls under the fantasy theme with the Western-like mansion, the Alice in Wonderland-like field, and stage plays. At other times, it brings out the more modern themes with the school and shopping malls. Then, there's our characters who are designed to look like normal people but have abnormal ways of expressing themselves. The most noticeable style of artwork is Iwai and her long hair that is eye catching for nearly anyone. Then, there are the Authors. Some of them are designed to look normal and innocent. Others are designed to really look like killers on the loose.

For soundtrack though, Dansai Bunri no Crime Edge actually has a catchy OST. It's catchy enough to maintain that magical theme through tense moments as well as those that are intimate. In one particular moment in one of the later episodes, there's a slow melody that is played to show how far Kiri and Iwai have connected in their relationship. Speaking of which, the voices for our main protagonists expresses themselves well for characters of their age. The OP song "Unmei no Ori" by Aimi shows montages of the various characters. Its tone is expressed in moments in which we see most of the Authors seemingly enduring the situations they are in. Then at the end of each song, there's the echo of 'Dansai Bunri no Crime Edge' giving off a more grim feeling of the series.

This series can be a hit or miss for potential fans from my perspective. For me, it was a bit of in between but leans more to the mediocre. Aside from the bizarre hair fascination and the weakly structured plot, the series does have some entertainment values at some occasions. It's also adorable with some of the moments our main two protagonists share throughout the series. At other instances, it becomes old quickly and rather forced rather than expressive. The Authors themselves may distinguish themselves from each other but they don't have much insight to go on. Ultimately though, the winner of the game will gain glory. What did I gain from Dansai Bunri no Crime Edge? Well, just a barely tolerable experience.

Everyone has his pills, all it takes is just a prescription we end up in total addiction.

For Haimura Kiri , his fondness for cutting hair has led him to a series of unexpected events stuffed in a peculiar story.Action evolves around these Killing Goods, that are normal objects that have powerful enchantments placed on them that is said to have been placed there by their first owners. As you have guessed these special properties are a means to power and conflict erupts when you fight to the death for a wish granted through a lowly murder leaving you in the end with some questions and
hopes for the future.
Ominous soundtracks back up the very well made fighting scenes that keep up the suspense and sometimes induce the owners feelings.

Artwork is a pretty impressive work of light and color that create a grand stage for the characters to perform on. Sparing no detail, be it architecture or natural scenery it is really meant to produce an impact on the viewer.
Characters are properly made to express their role through a stunning image, take the Hair Queen for example or Haimura under Graylands influence.

To my enjoyment all the fighting and suspense really mixed up with the fan service even though it had its own pathetic or odd moments. Personally I believe the feelings of people to be a good template for stories since they can be very powerful and sometimes they exceed the boundaries of human comprehension.

Dansai Bunri no Crime Edge is a rather recent anime based on a manga by Hikagi Tatsuhiko. The anime was handled by Studio Gokumi, a studio I only know from their work on A Channel. They don't really have many works yet since they're a pretty new studio, their first work wasn't even four years ago. This will be the second anime I've seen from them. Let's see how it compares to the first.

Our story opens with Kiri, our protagonist, going to the house of a rumoured spirit with long hair because... that's his fetish. I'm not even kidding. He goes because he has
a hair fetish. When he gets there he finds a petite girl roughly his age with hair down to her feet. He decides to stare at her, scissors in hand while breathing heavily. Contrary to common sense or basic survival skills, the girl, Iwai, decides that the best way to handle the situation is to invite him inside. Because in the land of poorly written characters, actions don't need to remotely resemble what anyone with a single functional brain cell would do. It turns out that Iwai has cursed hair that can't be cut. In spite of Kiri trying several pairs of scissors from her drawer. But that's okay because his pair is magical as it was a murder weapon at some point and it can cut her hair. The worst part is that that isn't even the stupidest aspect of this series. That's right, my friends, the idiocy escalates. It turns out that there are lots of people out there with magical murder weapons called authors and if any of them manages to kill Iwai, the “hair queen” they can get any wish they want and escape the spirit of the original murderer that still possesses the weapon. Kiri decides to protect her because she's surprisingly uncreeped out by him. The series from there follows the pair as they try to fend off a bunch of “authors” who either want to kill Iwai or Kiri. There are many problems that plague the narrative. The most obvious being that the premise is really stupid. Even if it was well-executed, which it isn't, it would still be just an absurdly stupid premise. Which might work in a parody but they play it seriously and try to play up the “drama.” Which is terribly written and the romance is cringe worthy to the point where it would fit into a Stephanie Meyer novel. I have nothing positive to say about the story. It starts out as mind-numbingly stupid and only gets worse eventually ending on an expositional onslaught about how much more there is to come.

The characters in this are horribly written. Their actions and motivations have no verisimilitude whatsoever. Kiri has a hair cutting fetish and protects Iwai because he's in love with her based on her hair. Iwai is an archetypal damsel in distress who spends her time either fixated on her love interest, crying or yelling for help. Most of the characters are defined entirely by exaggerated fetishes and the rest are just one-dimensional. The best characters are the dogs that appear briefly in two or three scenes. Just because they're the only characters who never do anything grossly stupid or incredibly annoying. To make things even worse, character motivations and actions change quite a bit in this for really flimsy reasons. They really couldn't use actual character reasons since the characters in this have less personality than a half leaf of lettuce so they have to resort to the tired “characters change because the plot says so.”

The art is meh. It's not as bad as the rest of the series, but it's nothing special. The character designs are pretty standard. The action sequences tend towards the slow, dragged out and uninteresting. They also mute the colours when things get violent. Having fetishy characters, including a pedophile, running around is fine, but showing blood would just be going too far. (Facepalm) There's really nothing visually interesting about the series.

The voice acting is pretty bad. Not because of the cast, I've heard most of them deliver good performances before, but because the characters have nothing to them. And actors can't make something out of nothing. As a result, the performances are pretty flat and the actors frequently just sound dis-interested. The music is okay.

The ho-yay factor is a 3/10. There are a couple homo-erotic scenes between two girls. Unfortunately, those girls are twin sisters. So it just ends up being disgusting. What is with creepy terrible writers and adding romantic subtext to relationships between twins? Looking at you too, Bendis.

This anime is horrendous. There's really nothing I can recommend it based on. The writing is terrible, the plot is stupid, the characters are bland at best and downright unpleasant at worst. I could only recommend this one to someone I hated and you're all such lovely people that I couldn't do that to you. Final rating 1/10. Next week I'll take a look at 5 centimetres per second. I know, it's not on my request queue, but I'm trying to finish Legend of the Galactic Heroes and it's quite long. Unfortunately, I don't have anymore requests that are short enough to watch in the meantime. Thank you all for being patient with me. This Friday I'll do a little something special for all of you. It's something I've wanted to do for a while and now seems a good time. And no, it's not images of myself in lingerie for Valentine's. I'm sure most of you would not be interested in seeing that anyway.

What happens when you combine Rapunzel and Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni with a generic moe romantic comedy? You get Dansai Bunri no Crime Edge, one of the most awkward anime series I've seen in quite some time. Awkward and campy are the best ways to describe it since trying to put this series into one genre is a damn near impossibility, on top of the odd elements this series tries to explore.

The series revolves around a rather strange junior high student with a hair fetish named Kiri Haimura, a possessor of a pair of scissors known as
a Killing Good. These Killing Goods are murder weapons for killers in the past and are passed down to their kin throughout the ages. Kiri isn't the most accepting of his Killing Good, but his opinion quickly changes of it when he encounters a sheltered girl with extremely long hair named Iwai Mushiyanokouji. Upon meeting her, he learns that she is cursed and her hair cannot be cut. She is known as the Hair Queen and that she is the target of a group named Gossip. Since he possesses a pair of scissors with a unique circumstance, he attempts to cut her hair with it...and their adventures begin from there.

Overall, I found the strongest aspect of this series was the atmosphere built from the great animation and music. This series did a masterful job of balancing out the comedy, romance, and thriller elements to make for a strangely intriguing series. The "awkwardness" of this series is actually what I thought to be its greatest strength. It's rare to find an anime that tries to blend the genres like Crime Edge attempted, and to some extent, it succeeded. While the atmosphere was fantastic for Crime Edge, it had a lot of flaws.

Generally, the characters I thought were good, but underdeveloped. Kiri was an interesting lead as an awkward, but likable protagonist. However, considering his background, I wanted to know more about his back story as well as his relationship with his father. It's a subject that's barely touched upon in the first episode and we don't ever see it again throughout the series. We do see some interactions between Kiri and his grandfather, but it doesn't do much to develop Kiri's character. Unfortunately, Iwai's character suffered the same problem. She is a likable character, but unfortunately her back story is not very well developed even though the series does give some general explanations early on and also later on in the series. Even then, it was still lacking. In my opinion, the relationship development between Kiri and Iwai was extremely awkward, almost seeming as if the director wasn't sure if he should be more aggressive or passive in their development...and in the end, it turns out being just awkward. The supporting cast I found to be okay. I wouldn't say there are a lot of memorable characters, but I will admit there are some that have interesting personality quirks. A few examples include Yamane with her awkwardly serious behavior, Emily's rather bipolar behavior, as well as the intriguing duo of Seigi and Kozakura, an Author with a jaded sense of justice and an Instead on a mission to keep him inline. Don't get me started on Kanae either, a mysterious character with...oddly enough, a lolita complex.

While I did think the animation was the strongest aspect of this series, the direction of it was a bit off-putting. There are some anime out there that you can consider ecchi...and then there's Crime Edge...which beats you over the head with a 2x4 of ecchi and fan service. While I don't mind the ecchi at times and found it to work in some instances, it seems like this series went WAY overboard with it. It's one thing to have ecchi with older, high school characters or adults, but it's a completely other thing when a majority of the ecchi is revolving around children that are 14-years-old or younger. There were times I seriously felt dirty for watching this knowing the characters were so young and are being so exposed. Like I said, there were times when the ecchi and fan service worked in the context of the series, but the producers seemed to hammer it in when they didn't need to. I'd even go so far as to call the production staff behind this series downright perverts.

As far as the plot and story are concerned, I did find it interesting, or at the very least, interesting enough to hold my attention. However, I felt this series didn't quite do enough to cover the bases in regards to explaining the Murderer's Game. It's explanation is extremely fragmented and round-a-bout. While it's explanation does make sense, it seems very impractical and I found myself groaning at just how stupid Gossip's logic was concerning the Murderer's Game.

My general thoughts on this series are...meh, it's okay. This series has an interesting aura about it with a nice blend of lighthearted atmosphere with extremely dark moments. It's animation (when taking the story seriously) is very good and the soundtrack is haunting at times. However, for everything good the atmosphere does with this series, it manages to always seem to take a step back with its horrifically padded fan service and unnecessary ecchi...thus, also resulting in some underdeveloped characters. This is a series that really had me hooked early on and kept me interested throughout, but as the series wore on, so did my patience with the director's antics. This series had the potential to be really good and it turned out being just average. On top of that, it left us on a mini-cliffhanger for a 2nd season. While I wasn't blown away by Crime Edge, I'd be interested in checking out a 2nd season if it does happen. Recommending this series to anyone would be difficult though considering how blended the genres are in this series. If you liked a show like Tasogare Otome x Amnesia or Sankarea, you might enjoy a series like this. Dansai Bunri no Crime Edge, despite its flaws, is a rather unique series. Overall, I'd call it average though. You can certainly do better than this series and you can certainly do worse as well. Still, it's at least worth trying out a few episodes to see if it is your cup of tea.